I f you've read News Thoughts for any amount of time, you've probably guessed a lot of things people do or say make me wonder why I just don't walk home.

At least I'm not this college professor who's so serious about his crusade to change the way a Los Angeles weatherman uses terminology, he's got to leave him alone or face six months in jail.

Melanie Patton Renfrew, a Harbor College teacher, wants KNBC-TV's Fritz Coleman to change references to onshore and offshore winds. She said the terms are confusing because people don't know which are coming and which are going.

Burbank-based KNBC obtained a restraining order in March 2008 after calling her behavior bizarre and saying Coleman feared for his safety. Prosecutors said she continued sending letters and e-mails. Last month, she pleaded no contest to violating the order.

An assistant city attorney said the case will be dismissed if she leaves Coleman alone through next August.

Authorities in eastern Pennsylvania said they've identified a suspected bank robber using the wallet he left behind.

Bethlehem police said 51-year-old Lloyd Virgil Barclay held up a KNBT branch Wednesday morning, making off with $800. But Barclay forgot his wallet, which police said he placed on the teller's counter when he presented a note demanding money.

The wallet had two photo IDs, a Social Security card and a Philadelphia criminal registration card. Police said the ID pictures match Barclay's image in surveillance footage.

Barclay, of Philadelphia, was charged with robbery and other offenses. He remained at large Wednesday.

But that's not as bad as this inmate in Houston, Texas, who was charged after officials learned he had a gun hidden under flabs of his own flesh.

George Vera, 25, was charged with possession of a firearm in a correctional facility after he told a guard at the Harris County Jail about the unloaded 9mm pistol. The Houston Chronicle reported Vera was originally arrested on charges of selling illegal copies of compact discs.

The 500-pound man was searched during his arrest and again at a city jail and the county jail, but officers never found the weapon in his rolls of skin. Vera admitted having the gun during a shower break at the county jail.

Dutch police who mowed down what they thought were illicit marijuana plants were red-faced Thursday when it emerged they'd ruined a research group's giant, officially sanctioned field of harmless hemp.

Police proudly announced Wednesday they'd found more than 47,000 cannabis plants, with an estimated street value of nearly euro4.5 million concealed in a corn field in the Flevoland province east of Amsterdam.

They mowed down half the plants only to be informed they were the property of Wageningen University and Research Center, a respected agricultural school. The field contained a new strain of hemp that researchers hope can be a sustainable source of fiber.